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- My wife Annie asked me recently why we didn’t have any rocket growing,
to which I replied that it’s a winter-spring salad crop, but it seems that
two of her lunch colleagues currently have rocket galore at Mount Pleasant
and Torrensville. Now I guess I’ll have to sacrifice some of the lettuce
patch for rocket in summer.
- If you want to try it, plant your rocket seed in a shady aspect at this
time of year and most importantly, give it lots of water and water-soluble
nitrogen fertilizer. Pick it young as the hot mustard flavour rises with
age, to become quite potent if left to mature. They will probably bolt to
seed too, so keep the leading tips pruned.
- If you rely on using drip trays under your potted plants in this hot
weather, take the time to empty them every other day or else, very quickly
the concentration of salts in the water, due to evaporation, gets to be more
than many plants can cope with. I tested some last week and the dissolved
salts content ran to 1200 ppm (cf. Adelaide’s reticulated water at about
750 ppm). That’s pretty salty and enough to cause leaf burn on many
varieties, if your plants get to dry out.
- With Petunias that were planted in November-December, looking pretty daggy
at present, it’s not too late to plant some more. Use seedlings and I’d
opt for the floribundas, rather than the multifloras, as the overhead
watering knocks the multifloras about.
- Best floribundas available at present in my opinion are the ‘Bobby
Dazzler’ or ‘Super Dazzler’ ranges. These are bold single colour
mixtures and will provide colour for the next three months at least in a
sunny spot or plant them in containers if you are short of space at present.
- Another often-overlooked bedding plant at this between season are the
American marigolds and the bold yellow ‘Honeymoon’ is one of the best.
While the tall African marigolds like ‘African Queen’ will flower and
keep growing until May, they get mouldy flowers all too easily as the nights
get colder in March-April.
- I’m often at a loss to describe what it is about compost tea and worm
water that makes plants look so healthy after it’s applied. There’s not
much supporting literature or even claims on the product. Well a visiting
American expert on soil organisms Dr Elaine Ingham, has put her finger on
it. It’s the fact that all the bacteria, fungi, protozoa and beneficial
nematodes are encouraged and that combats the activity of most of the rogue
water moulds and soil parasites.
- Local recycler and soil processor, Jeffries at Wingfield, are using new
techniques to concentrate these microbes and add them to their soil mixes,
with astounding results. The main benefit is that primary producers have to
use far less fertilizer on crops for the same or better returns. The
implications of this are enough to lead the second green revolution of the
past four decades.
- Jeffries Garden Soils by the way are the main windrow composting
processors of the green organic collections from leading Adelaide councils
that recycle green organics through fortnightly collections at kerbside. At
first the main benefit to councils was to diminish their dumping fees to
landfill and so reduce methane production) one of the major cause of
greenhouse warming), but now it may well be that a by-product could reduce
our dependence on chemical fertilizers too.
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